I stopped at our only grocery store, Winn Dixie, last evening. Produce was very empty, meat was empty, not a stitch of tp or pt or facial tissues at all or eggs, which is what I went for. Went back at 0600 this morning and there were eggs and a little meat but still no paper products.
I swear, I’m not going to even attempt to see what is happening at my local grocery stores until *at least *Saturday. Monday was insane. We’ll see if people have calmed down by the weekend.
If not, I might have to go armed.
Nah. I don’t like Wal-Mart to begin with.
I wasn’t at the store today, but my mom was, and she picked up a gallon of milk for me while she was there. So apparently they’ve recovered at least somewhat from where they were Sunday.
Folks, try your local smaller grocers! I went out today for fruit and veggies (we were out of town for all the panic shopping, and used up the last onion yesterday), and the medium-sized local independent grocer had every single item on my list. There was even some toilet paper, though only in individually wrapped rolls. Chicken, dairy, flour, canned goods of all sorts, rice/legumes…seriously, the only thing it looked like they might be out of was Lysol. Other than that, all shelves fully stocked. Again, I was in and out of there in a few minutes.
I thought panic buying would be over by now. No. The only onions left were giant red onions.
No paper products at all. Very little packaged meats. The only pasta was gluten-free-non-GMO vegetable-infused-cage-free-tofu.
No Spam but plenty of cans of Skyline Chili.
I screwed up and bought frozen stir fried rice and a package of salad shrimp. Forgot I already bought some. Makes an excellent quick dish and I can fry it up so some of the rice is crispy.
Overall I was able to adjust my list to accommodate different dishes to prepare. I think the hording will go on for awhile because of the layoffs. I don’t think people saw it coming.
Australia. 14 day quarantine for incoming tourists, no indoor groups larger than 100, sports shutting down, and the media talking about nothing else…
and we’ve moved on from panic-buying TP to the slow and considered buying of everything. Stores were busy but not packed, shelves were… more empty at 5pm than they were at 1pm. For example: still a good selection of candy and ice-cream, with only a few lines sold out. But freeze pops / zoopers are gone. And all the bottled fruit juice and cordials. Canned food is gone from the large stores == and people are driving out to raid the regional towns.
I’ve told my wife that if we run out of food I’m going to try to loose some weight.
I went to a Costco that I don’t usually go to (it has a little different stock than the one closest to me) and here is what I found.
-
There was a line to get in. Not because it was particularly busy, but because they were limiting how many people were in the building. Once a certain number of people left, they let more people in
-
There was a list at the entrance of what was out of stock (toilet paper, eggs, disinfectant wipes, and some other things I can’t remember).
-
There were signs throughout the store about social distancing, using a shopping cart as an example of how much distance should be between you and someone else
-
At the checkout lanes, there were small strips of yellow tape on the floor to show you were you were supposed to wait behind the person in front of you. There was also a line there that was controlled by staff .
-
All the benches that are usually at the food court were gone (but this was true earlier in the week).
-
Gas was $1.99 (win?)
//i\
I did that yesterday morning, but my experience was a bit different from yours.
The grocery store in question is a smallish non-chain grocery just a couple miles from my house, and there aren’t a whole lot of trips from Point A to Point B that would take you through here on the way: if you shop at this grocery, you either live nearby, or sheer desperation from the bare shelves at the grocery stores out on the main highways drove you miles out of your way to try our local store.
TP and paper towels: all gone.
Bread: just about all gone. What was left was mostly hot dog and hamburger buns.
Chicken and turkey: all gone.
Milk: I got the last half-gallon of skim.
While I was able to get most of the things on my list, since it was just a regular grocery list rather than a stock-up-for-disaster list, we really did need more chicken breasts and ground chicken, and none were to be had. The Firebug’s been eating a lot of mac n’cheese lately, and we were down to our last box, so we needed more. I was able to get a few boxes of his preferred kind, but I was lucky: the mac shelf looked like a big bite had been taken out of it. Beans of just about all kinds were still available, but the shelves there were a good deal thinner than usual.
So it was in somewhat better shape than the big stores out on the main drag, but it was clearly feeling the effects of people stocking up on everything.
I just stopped by what I would call a more upscale grocery store. With the exception of paper items it was fully stocked. The pasta isle was thinner but I was able to get regular spaghetti which I’m almost out of. Since I’m working from home I expect more pasta dishes in my future out of cooking convenience.
OK, rice was pretty thin. but they still had various fancy rice. I bought a small specialty rice that sounded like it would work in well with a jambalaya recipe. It had ginger in it.
We were overdue for a Costco run, and I dropped Tom Scud off at work this morning so he wouldn’t have to take the bus (he’s been biking to work, but it’s raining here today, and I will pick him up so he can bring an office printer home). There’s a Costco on the way, and I decided that if it wasn’t a zoo, I’d check it out. (My mom is 77 and immunocompromised, so I was shopping for her as well as for my own household. We didn’t need anything desperately, but who knows how long it will be before it’s safe for her to go out?)
I fortified myself with coffee (which was a mistake, in hindsight, because then I needed to pee), and using my dormant Soviet grocery line instincts, got there an hour before opening. I would have been the first one in line if I hadn’t waited in my car for a while to stay warm, but I was the second in line.
By the time the store opened an hour later, the line ran the length of the building (with people practicing proper social distancing). Entry was restricted to 500 people at a time. Even at opening time, they had zero hand sanitizer or toilet paper. They were sensibly restricting purchases of paper towels (one package per person), bottled water (2 cases per person), and roast chickens (one per person). I didn’t really see any empty spots on the shelves, but they had no russet potatoes, no generic acetaminophen (they did have Tylenol, though) and no Mucinex-D, both of which they normally carry. Pretty much everything else on my list was in stock.
The food court had all seating removed and was out of everything except hot dogs and pizza. The staff at the exit, instead of taking receipts for review with their hands, were having us lay them on small clipboards and just marked them off without really looking at them. I imagine they are more worried about keeping people moving than anything else at this point.
I just returned from a local CostCo run (North Atlanta suburbs), at 2:30pm local time. Plenty of parking, lots of carts. A man wiped down the cart handle as I entered, and a lady reminded me to keep 6 feet away from others (and there was a sign next to her stating the same).
There was a whiteboard just inside the entrance listing about 9 things they were out of; I only noticed the two that would have interested me: hand sanitizer and toilet paper.
I snagged one of the last 10 packages of paper towels. There was a HUGE amount of bottled water.
At the pharmacy, which was the purpose of my trip, there was no line. I also observed that the hearing aid center was effectively shut down (one manager was there just answer the phone/answer walk-up questions).
My costco (melb.vic.au) has two large truckloads of bottled water filling the spacee where tissues and toilet paper would normally be.
I made a grocery run today, a little earlier than I usually go out, at around 9AM.
A lot of the shelves were running low, although they weren’t completely out of most things. Crackers and hotdogs and juice were on my list for today and I got almost everything I went in for. I even took advantage of some sale prices, just like usual. But it’s crazy -day by day and store by store.
I also observed several workers restocking shelves. Still no toilet paper or hand sanitizer, The store had received a fresh shipment of paper towels, like many people,we are low on TP and flush 
with paper towels and Kleenex.
I think we are going to start saving the TP for #2 and using the Kleenex and paper towels ( without flushing) for everything else. I’ve vacationed in places with sustainable sewage systems that didn’t allow paper, so I’ve done the “throw the TP in the trash” thing before and you get used to it very fast.
So much so that in the Liberia, Costa Rica airport (which is convenient to lots of places that use the sustainable systems) there are signs in the restroom reminding you to flush the toilet paper.
Oh, and I went looking for TP online. I found novelty Trump TP in stock at around $14 a roll ($25 for 3) - thought about it and deemed it too expensive.
But then I found this gift set with a roll of Trump TP AND a Trump toilet brush for $11. That was worth it, it’s coming this weekend. I’ve never looked forward to cleaning my toilet before.
Hit the local Jewel in Chicago’s SW burbs at 9AM. Headed first for the TP aisle but all I saw was completely empty shelves. Across the aisle there was still a good supply of paper napkins though. One look down the bread aisle - same story.
Plenty of produce available, but not much left of the “artisan” or baked in-store breads. Nothing left in the prepackaged lunchmeat section. Milk shelves were mostly empty, I got the last carton of lactose-free. GO ME! House brand dried pasta also mostly gone but was being restocked as I was grabbing the last 2 boxes of linguine.
Eggs? HA !!! Shelves were as empty as #45’s soul. Frozen food section was mostly empty especially vegetables and pasta but frozen skillet meals and dinners were a bit better. Frozen pizzas were almost gone. Many of the shoppers seemed to be stocking up on soda but that could partly be because they were part of a “buy 5, get $5 off” deal. Every single aisle had at least one employee restocking shelves. Deli and bakery employees were wearing masks.
No nastiness or unruliness on the part of the shoppers, but a lot of frustration and a lot of phone calls being made reporting the situation and asking for further instructions. However did we manage to do our grocery shopping in the days before cellphones?.
If it’s not raining I might try another store tomorrow.
H-E-B in Austin: No eggs, no soap, no laundry detergent pods, no toilet paper, almost all out of fresh produce (except for pre-packaged salads.) No alcohol wipes, sanitizer.
But…nobody is buying shampoo. Plenty of shampoo on the shelves. Aside from the fact that it bubbles a lot more, is there any reason a bit of shampoo can’t do the same task as hand soap?
Did our regular shopping on a Th. instead of Fri. this week.
Much better in some regards. The produce section was almost up to snuff. The had a lot of milk. I mean, a lot.
The paper aisle was nearly empty … except some pallets of one brand of toilet paper. So people were grabbing 2-3 big packages of those. I saw one cart with a whole box.
The meat section was really sad. Even the display case was bare. Lots of cheese. Some eggs. Nearly bare bread aisle but there were still some loaves of Dave’s and such. As we left a guy was stocking some loaves. Seemed to be taking his time since he had so little to shelve. The frozen veggie section was still nearly empty.
Anyway, a step in the right direction. We got almost all we wanted to get.
Why the f— isn’t there some mandate for stores to limit few buyers from purchasing all of some item? Like a limit of 2 packs of TP per shopper?!?
I myself have picked up one of the few remaining loaves of Dave’s amongst an otherwise-empty bread shelf myself more than once this past week. Thankfully, Dave’s is on my list of acceptable breads I occasionally buy anyway even if it is not my first choice.
In many stores, such as H-E-B, there is indeed such a limit. Two packs of TP per shopper.